ALL RISE
All Rise is about bringing people together.” A work first conceived as a celebration of integration. We can celebrate both difference and collaboration. All Rise is exhilarating: a large-scale attempt to make American music sound like an argument worth having. An intense collaboration between orchestra and Big Band.
This year’s 2026 Edinburgh international festival has built its artistic theme around the piece: on its opening night at Usher Hall, Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra joined the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and massed choirs. All Rise, is Marsalis’s first symphony, written in 1999 – a hybrid for a 15-piece jazz band, a 50-piece orchestra and a 100-piece choir, premiered in 2000 by the New York Philharmonic with Kurt Masur. Across 12 movements, Marsalis paints a sprawling civic canvas whose building blocks are American – marches, blues, dance rhythms – and whose aspiration is large.
“It’s my piece, but it’s not my show.” WYNTON MARSALIS is now embedded in the orchestra, hidden behind the strings and woodwind, a black-suited figure in the heart of his own symphony.
All Rise has 12 movements, 200 musicians and aims to unite America. The great US trumpeter and composer on his All Rise symphony, his jazz great mentors – and learning humility from his wife Nicola Benedetti
Today Marsalis is mellower: quick to credit others, reject ego and talk more about collaboration than correction. He’s keen to puncture the myth that a symphonic work is the solitary utterance of genius. “All Rise was a collaborative exercise. James Oliverio, a soundtrack writer, was teaching me how to orchestrate while I was doing it. I had Milan Turković, the great Austrian bassoonist, helping me with the woodwind. But the main man was the late conductor Kurt Masur. He was always goading me to write something for him. ‘Are you afraid to write for the New York Philharmonic?’ he’d say. Kurt saw a segregated New York and wanted a piece that brought people together.”
Marsalis has been wary of the limits of fusing jazz and symphonic music. “I wanted to draw from American mythology and find intersections. Because with some music, there is no common ground. You’re not going to hear a jazz version of a Beethoven symphony. It’s too many chord changes.” His first symphony is built on dance music. “It’s about the relationship between tango and choro; between ragtime and Anglo-Celtic fiddle music; between New Orleans marches and European band counterpoint. But you have to be aware of certain things. In classical music, the basses don’t play all the time. In our music, it plays all the time. And in classical music, the percussion is accent, but in jazz and Latin music, it’s everything.
“So you have to find the common ground that you intersect with. Because if you’re not on that ground, there’s no intersection. John Coltrane said he was looking for a universal coefficient. It’s like the word mama. You say mama, it has a universal sound and feeling to it.”
He talks a lot about links with other musics – what he’s learned from Iraqi Naseer Shamma, Ghanaian percussionist Yacub Addy, Irish-American violinist Mark O’Connor, and his enduring friendships with Willie Nelson and Paul Simon. “I meet up with Paul as much as I can – we talk a lot about the relationships between African-American and Anglo-Celtic music, how that is the foundation of pretty much everything we all do.”
When Marsalis began running the jazz orchestra at Lincoln Centre – New York’s pre-eminent arts complex at 26. “I was one of the youngest in the orchestra, alongside legends who had worked with Ellington and Basie. Now I’m probably the oldest.” He recently announced that he will be stepping back from his executive leadership role after nearly 40 years.
For decades it was his pulpit for declarations; now he’s more interested in how musicians learn one another’s language – “
Extract from
All Rise opened Edinburgh Internation Festival 8th August. The UK premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Concerto for Orchestra BBC Proms 13th August.
'All Rise', the Chorus proclaims halfway through Wynton Marsalis's first symphony. It's a statement as much about the importance of our “fellow man” as about individual salvation. The chorus stomps, and bells ring for this declaration!!
One of the best Festival Opening Nights ever!
Marsalis has said that he is looking for 'common ground' between classical music and jazz, and he finds it in the rhythmical music shared by Americans, from funeral marches to Latin American tangos to ballroom quicksteps. The work is in three sections. After the short stirring opening by full ensemble, much of the first section is exploratory and unsettling, though there are moments of sheer beauty, for example the RSNO strings' lyrical waltz in 'Go slow (but don't stop)'. The second part is on surer ground. Wynton Marsalis, has terrific solos, which rise in breathtaking improvisations to smiles from the orchestra and spontaneous applause. improvisation comes from the jazz orchestra – pianist Joe Block shines, as do the front-row saxophonists. The Chorus here blossom into full choral, from praise songs and communal chants leading to rousing certainty, with the soloists from the JMF Singers, providing distinctive voices.
Three instrumental movements begin the third section. there's much interplay between the parts of the ensemble, with the RSNO musicians adding the larger and subtler sounds required by the composer. Most prominent are the timpanist and the percussion: racing along the back row, they produce threatening volume, eerie whoops, and subtler rattling on hand drums and maracas. The upper strings are lush -like smoothness, while the brass section conjure up marching rhythms and muted wah- wahs. Led by Leader Maya Iwabuchi. As the momentum increases. the Marsalis trumpet takes flight again with conductor James Gaffigan essaying a 360-degree spin. The last movement's initial discordance is washed away by the soprano soloist exhorting 'All Rise' with the Chorus responds, 'I am, I am, I am' and the symphony moves to a joyful conclusion... Then applause is halted for a coda.
The JLCO return to their roots for a session of New Orleans jazz , the Chorus downs scores and bops along to “Open up your heart and sing!” The standing ovation sees Wynton Marsalis brought out for his bow and appreciation for to James Gaffigan and James Grossmith whose enthusiasm has created a top-class performance. After another false ending with a marching band from the Scottish National Youth Jazz Orchestra who process in the side aisle, and after a circuit of the auditorium continue the party in the street. Wow!
Royal Scottish National Orchestra James Gaffigan conductor and Edinburgh Festival Chorus James Grossmith chorus directorand Jason Max Ferdinand Singers
Extract from Edinburgh music review - https://www.edinburghmusicreview.com/reviews/
